Source clip missing

Does the name of the missing clip have any odd characters like : or /?

You should be able to click on the yellow triangle and see what it thinks it is looking for. There is also a reconnect command, but I cannot look it up right now. I am doing a long Stabilization Analysis.

Probably right-click on the clip in the project and reconnect, or right-click on the thumbnail in the event and reconnect.

I am having the exact same problem. I'm sure this is blasphemy on this forum but I MISS MY PC. The files are on my hard drive. They haven't gone anywhere. I can pull them up in finder and play them in QT. What is going on!!! I too have been working on this for over a week now. It's my son's wrestling team highlight video. I was volunteered for the job because I knew the software on PC so well. I made a stupid mistake and overclocked my cpu a little too much. So instead of rebuilding my PC for under $500 and that is with a quad core cpu, faster RAM and dare I say it, the ability to set up like I want it. I spent $2k for the sake of my wife and children who do love it. And honestly, I wasn't against it. Especially after all the good things I have heard about the graphics programs. So far I can say the $99 apps I had on my PC out perform both iMovie and iPhoto by a long shot.

OK enough of the rant. Just had to get that off my chest. Anybody have an idea how to reconnect to the source files?

A little background..I did expect some compatibility issue bringing in files from about 80 different sources, I've been copying video and picture files from flash drives on to my HDD. I then put them in the same folder, imported in to the events, clipped and put my project together. Today however, those same source files cannot be found. What gives???

I am having the same problem with a project I have been working on. I imported directly to an external firewire 800 drive and created the project there. The "event" still shows up in full but the edited "project" view shows the same yellow caution triangle noted in the other posts. My project was just under 45 minutes.

I called Apple support and was told by "Chris" that if this happens, all of the editing is gone and the project must be recreated. I asked that it be logged as a possible iMovie '09 problem. He said "They are still working on updates for that product since it is so new" and said to make sure I keep looking for updates. No other options or help was given.

same problem here. I had my project and my files on a drive in my mac pro, but want to use my new bought macbook for video editing (on the couch.. 😉. I copied the projects folder and the folder with the video files to a USB drive. I can open the project, but there seems to be no way to reconnect to the corresponding video files. MAJOR flaw IMO.

cheers.

*Apple! Help. I am having the same problem in iMovie '09. One of my Projects got separated from its Event. In the Project section, I am getting an exclamation mark inside yellow triangles. How do I re-connect the Project to the Event the Project was generated from?*

This is to 'amen corner' the SOURCE CLIP MISSING note by Bob McAdams. I discovered my multiple
diamond warnings at the beginning of each clip in the Project Library right after I finished transfering all contents of one MacBook Pro to a second backup older MacBook Pro. The OS 10.5.6 was on both.
The clips in both computers were equally affected.

This happened to me the first time I played with the latest version of iMovie.
If it is any value to whoever is trying to fix this bug: I tried to Move Rejected Clips to Trash, got some funny error, and after that all was broken.

As much as I would love to continue playing with the new version, I dare not waste my time until this is fixed!

Same problem here. Everything was fine, then I opened up iMovie 09 tonight and BOOOOM!!! All links were gone (clip missing errors) in all my projects. The only thing I can think of (and APPLE, I hope you are reading along here), is that I accidentally left my backup drive turned on. It contains copies of all my iMovie events. I back these up manually (copy them) because it is just way too much for Time Machine to handle. Anyway, when iMovie finally started up, I could see all the events from both drives (that's fine) but iMovie couldn't see any of them from the Projects window. At this point I'd say iMovie (iLife for that matter) should still be considered Beta code for the faint of heart. Or be prepared to loose potentially all work done in iMovie 09. I sincerely hope APPLE can find their bugs and get these Project and Clip reattached. I will hold out hope and not delete my Projects for now.
The the techs out there, I keep all my iMovie stuff on an external 2TB esata drive. I keep copies of everything on an external 2TB FW 800 drive. I have all the latest updates on (and did when this problem occurred).

Dave,

The iMovie Events Folder should have a .localized extension on it. Verify that it does by doing a Get Info on the iMovie Events Folder.

Now find one of the iMovie Projects that shows missing clips in the Finder. Right click on the project in the Finder and select Show Package Contents. Now open the Project file inside the project in bbedit or any editor like it. Search for iMovie Events and verify the your paths are correct. If not, fix them and save the Project file.

This is a pain, but I think you can get your project back working. Good luck.

Jim2006, you are indeed brilliant. You have saved me hours of work. By following your instructions I realized that what happened is I moved my video clip from one event to another (taking a break in between working on project). By viewing the 'Show Package Contents' it was looking for event 'New Event 1' that I had renamed 'Italy'. So I somewhat not so cleverly renamed my event 'Italy' back to 'New Event 1' and no longer have 'Source Clip is Missing' from all of my video.

Thanks so much!

Thanks for the help Jim. Not sure what happened but I've found three issues so far. The .localized extension was indeed missing, so I added it. I downloaded a demo copy of bbedit and opened one of the Projects in question. I searched for iMovie Events and the path was wrong. Actually the volume name was wrong. Not sure how it did that as I haven't changed the volume name ever. My external volume name is "Media 1 My Book". The volume name in the Project file was "Media 1 My Book 1". I have no idea where that trailing "1" came from. I removed it, saved the Project, but no luck. I opened up the Project in bbedit again and noticed at the top of the edit window are two lines. The first is Last Saved, and the second is File Path. On the File Path line, I again noticed a wrong volume name. This time it was "Media 1 My Book 3". Yes, 3. I seem to have some random number issue going on. Anyway, do you know how I can edit that line? Too weird. Thanks again.

-Dave

UPDATE

Jim, after carefully looking at the properties of various files on my external drive, there seemed to be an issue with the actual Drive Volume name as reported by Get Info. For some reason (still unknown to me) there were random numbers being appended to the volume name. Could be a Mac OS issue or a driver issue with the esata Express card that the drive is connected to. Anyway, this was messing everything up. So I changed the volume name back to the factory default of "My Book" and that fixed that problem. Next I followed your instructions for fixing my iMovie Projects and all is well now. You were a huge help. Thanks for saving me tons of rework. Now if only I knew why numbers were being appended to the Volume name.